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15jan22
I thought a lot about how we all choose to exist in the world today.
It wasn’t a day filled with adventure or anything specific really – it was more an amorphous day of just existing for a moment – a pause or timeout from the stresses of everyday life. A breath.
We drove aimlessly for far too long, sipping our coffees (tea for me) and just talking. About life. Our lives, our dreams, our pasts, our future. We talked about what being back in State College regularly is for me – how it shapes my days and my thoughts. We talked about the difference between what home means for me and what home means for John. We talked about a lot of things. But we didn’t talk about people. Maybe because it’s not interesting to us, maybe because we don’t interact with people regularly enough to have thoughts … or maybe it’s how we choose to exist in this life.
Which got me thinking about how people choose to be – how they choose to interact with the environment around them, the people they come in contact with – the content they choose to consume.
I’d be naive to think that there is no audience for what I consider absurd content. Hateful content. If there are makers, there are consumers. People do not create readily without a need, a desire, a problem to solve. And if content exists for things I consider worthwhile or useful, then the opposite must also be true. And if both the content exists and the market exists, then I begin to consider the people who deem this form of content beneficial. Who are they? What is their motivation? Do they believe what they produce? Has this served them well in the past?
And if I am wondering about these nameless, faceless people, shouldn’t I also consider my own role and my own choices in the same/similar situations ….
Which brings me back to the choices people make in how they exist in the world.
I can only speak for mine, because those are the only choices that I govern. I know what I believe is worthwhile and useful and I know what I believe is hateful, ignorant and pointless. But my beliefs only govern me … and my beliefs can also be viewed as opinions, which mean they are fallible, mercurial and undefinable. ‘Worthless’ is not a noun, it is an adjective and therefore, infinitely subjective.
I’d get twisted about all of it but I’ve been having this thought circle for what feels like years, and I always end up back in the same place. I can only control myself, I can only decide for myself and I cannot control, influence or mandate any other person’s choices in how they exist in this world.
It would be infuriating if it also wasn’t so finite.
Xox, g
14jan22
Some days play out exactly as you think they will. Others … not so much.
Today was a bit of both for us. We had a plan, we knew the objective … but life wasn’t feeling super cooperative, so things didn’t go exactly as we’d envisioned.
I’m not always very good about being super aware in the moment, but today – for some strange, unknown reason – I took a beat. I realized that in the end, we would arrive at the same conclusion (back home in Bellefonte, new truck). And that the way we got there might not have been what we’d anticipated, but wasn’t that the quirky nature of life?
I even had the crazy forethought to understand — as we climbed in the truck to head home —that I should eat something or risk being a complete bitch for the duration of the drive.
So our day was crazy. And we ended up not even making dinner (French fries and mozzarella sticks will do that). And then, instead of a movie or a show, we watched the Harry Potter reunion.
But it wasn’t bad. It just … was. I guess I’m learning that it’s easier if I let go of the expectations. Everything feels less intense, less dramatic and less dire if I just accept it as it comes.
I’m forty-two and that’s a really tough lesson to learn.
Xox, g
13jan22
I went back and read some of my blog posts from January 2021. I was definitely taking blogging more seriously and I had some pretty interesting things to say (to me, at least!). After last night’s blogging fiasco (well, to be honest, before then but the incident amplified it) I have made a conscious effort to write today before the end of the day and not about blogging or my day or anything painfully mundane.
As I drove to Barnes & Noble this morning my mind was filled with ideas and thoughts. I thought – I can write about anything I want to write about. It’s my blog, it earns no money and has no readers. The post is my oyster. If that makes sense to you. It makes sense to me ….
I could write about how being in State College is haunted for me – haunted by memories and people and choices I made a long, long time ago. I both love and dread being here, love and dread remembering that me. I walk down memory lane over and over again; affectionate towards those old memories but also cringing, knowing what’s coming, knowing how it all turns out.
I could blog about how strange it is to transition from writing on my iPad to writing on my computer. I keep reaching for the screen as though it’s touch screen … it’s not. But the keys are definitely easier and I find that comforting.
I could write about perspective – how driving along Benner Pike, skies blue, air cold and crisp, snow iced across green fields makes me feel, and how that feeling is both the same and vastly different from how the same moment affects my husband. How he looks at fields and thinks about working them in his youth and hunting similar landscapes throughout his life and I look at the these fields and think of paintings and long walks and horses. Both realities a reflection of our lives, our experiences. Both true to us, but simultaneously not true for the other.
I could write about how this Barnes & Noble is my ultimate favorite Barnes & Noble. How I used to come here when Seattle’s Best Coffee was the cafe. How I’d find a big chair and curl up, reading text books and history books and books for pleasure. How I can still remember specific days, watching people walk by, browsing and purchasing books, as I read Pliny and Agatha Christie.
I could write about Starbucks. Oh how I could write about Starbucks! Have I ever done that? I can’t remember. I would assume I have. I have loved Starbucks for as long as I’ve known what Starbucks is. And I have drunk the same drink since my college friend came back to school after summer break and introduced me to the soy chai. He’d worked at the Starbucks in Chestnut Hill (a store I am familiar with … now, but not then) and with his return came a wealth of Starbucks knowledge. I can fall down the slippery slope of all my Starbucks memories throughout my adult life because it has been a constant, a place I’ve always found comfort and respite from the thrashings of the outside world. Happiness in a Cup. That is what my Starbucks Soy Chai is, has always been and will always be.
Mostly what I wanted to do was write. Because tapping out a few paltry (and frankly pathetic) lines after eleven at night isn’t a testament to what this exercise is all about. This exercise is an attempt to teach myself the discipline of writing – the ritual, yes, but also the slogging, when it isn’t easy, when I have nothing to say. When I am not ‘inspired’ to write but do it anyway.
Husband found headphones for me (I forgot my ear pods at home) and I have a song on repeat — something that works for me when I’m writing because it sets a mood, a tempo, a feeling. It helps me keep track of me, and that’s a Herculean task. I have a chai and I have a table. The rest is up to me.
As I sit here, in a Barnes & Noble that was my past and is now my present, as I prepare to head home earlier than anticipated, I marvel at where my life is now. How did that twenty-something girl from her first tour of State College become the woman I am today? How did I connect the dots to become me, to get here?
It’s what’s on my mind. It’s why I’m writing.
xox, g
12jan22
There was absolutely nothing remarkable about today.
We did the things. Work and chores and dinner.
And I was nearly asleep before once again remembering I hadn‘t blogged. So I obviously have nothing to say and am very, very tired.
Life.
Snow on the forecast for this weekend. Significant snow and I hope it happens. I love snow.
Xox, g
11jan22
First, I need to stop blogging as I’m going to bed. Because by this time I’ve completely given up on critical thought and all I’m truly focused on is falling asleep (and staying asleep) for the rest of the night. But Stephen King wrote in On Writing that best practice for writing is to write … every day. So I’m here, writing every day. Like I did last year. Hoping it sticks better this year. Hoping at some point it stops being about getting it done and starts being about having something to say.
The truth is I have many things to say, I just haven’t found the personal discipline to sit down and put my thoughts to paper in a cohesive, understandable way. It’s much easier in theory than in practice. As most things are.
Husby and i have been watching the show “Station Eleven” on HBO. We are caught up and now anticipating the finale on Thursday. It has been a confusing, intriguing, layered, troubling, uncomfortable, enlightening series. As I watch it I wonder – do I have anything this powerful to share? Does my creativity hit this level of brilliance? … No one – least of all me – will ever know if I don‘t finish something. That’s the truth.
Anyway. It’s later than I want it to be but I’m going to bed now. I have written for today.
Xoxo, g
10jan22
There are themes that repeat in my mind, ideas that I chew on and spit out and then come back to, still curious, still baffled, still unable to solve.
I guess that’s the problem with being super type A/OCD and wanting, almost needing neat and orderly explanations. My chiropractor has been teaching me the same lesson for years – sometimes there is no cause and no solution. What is just is. And I desperately struggle to find peace in that.
For the past … well, many days, we have been falling asleep to Fellowship of the Ring. It is a movie that John and I both love, but it is also a movie that we came to individually, long before we met each other. I found it on a snowy afternoon when I was in search of anywhere to be but my new room in my new house in State College. I went for a walk, bundled from head to toe against the biting cold and wind. I walked slowly because even then, when I could still feel my legs and my feet, I was cautious and every street downtown was wind blown with snow over a thick sheet of ice.
Back then, there was a movie theatre between College Ave and Beaver Ave and I’d decided that I could spent a few hours warm and alone before returning to a ‘home’ in which I knew no one. The only movie playing within two hours was LOTR. For me, it began there.
I’ve been watching it ever since. And it’s funny and strange to me that this year marks twenty years since that freezing cold day in my life. When I slunk into a seat near the back of a tiny theatre, resolved to fall asleep for a bit before returning to my new digs but was instead transported to Middle Earth.
Time and truth. The ideas that I work over and over in my mind and cannot solve. Time stands still – Bilbo and Gandalf and Frodo and Sam. Time slides by – Ian Holm and Christopher Lee have died. The film quality feels fuzzy. Twenty years. So much has happened and yet, it always takes me back to that moment, that breath of peace I found upon my return to Penn State after nearly a year away. After Italy and 9/11. A lifetime in less than 365 days.
Time is tricky.
Fellowship of the Ring is not. It is comfort and familiarity. It is soothing in an unsettling time.
Xoxo, g
9jan22
Here’s the thing about resolutions — the only person who gives them any power, any weight, is the person making them.
This is what I thought as I lay in bed, so proud of closing my eyes before 9.45p (my designated bedtime) having accomplished all the things I needed to do before bed.
And then, as John and I talked about life and our upcoming week, and how lucky we are to have each other, and how much we love Fellowship of the Ring my eyes – newly filled with eye ointment – popped open and I said “I forgot to blog.”
A thousand things ran through my brain at once and I came to the sad and inevitable conclusion that no, while it did not truly matter if I blogged or not, yes, it actually did matter a great deal to me. I managed to blog most every day at the beginning of last year and last year’s beginnings were much more bleak than this year. If I can’t manage to follow my own prescribed discipline and my own rules, then what am I even doing?
So here I am, talking about nothing because today was a lazy day filled with football and spiralized sweet potato and freezing rain and strange television. And even if I’d had a brilliant blog post idea, right now all I want to do is stop squinting through my eye ointment, lie down and go to sleep.
But I did blog and even though it’s nonsense it means something to me. These words, this blog. It means something to me.
Xoxo, g
8jan22
I was thinking about Paris yesterday.
My sister-in-law is from Paris and she is both so inherently French that it’s impossible to articulate, and also impossibly not French at all – or rather, not stereotypically French. She’s absolutely lovely – funny and kind and always open. She intuitively knows how to cook and she always looks stylish in the way French women always do – effortlessly and understated.
J+I were supposed to be flying to Paris in a few weeks but we won’t be doing that anymore and my heart is heavy and oh so sad. Life happened, which is the way of things, but it doesn’t change my soul-deep disappointment.
The last time I was in Paris …. Well, it was *also* February and it was cold – snow flying horizontally along the Seine. I’d forgotten my coat (Philadelphia had been unseasonably warm the day I flew) and no shops were open on Sunday for me to buy a new one. So I spent my first day in Paris freezing, holding a sweater tightly around my body and breathing into a scarf that never left my neck.
I’d been there with a dear friend – a friend I traveled with frequently back in those days – and we’d explored Paris in winter. Art museums, yes, but also cemeteries and hot cocoa and falafel and churches and movie theatres. I have such fond memories of that trip. I had been so looking forward to sharing Paris with John.
One day.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Xoxo, g
7jan22
Ten years ago, John + I drove to New Jersey and discovered the missing piece to our lives. Her name was Lucy (well, actually it was Betsy … ), she was six months old and she knew that we were hers just as much as we knew she was ours.
There have been very few things that hubs & I have done in our nearly fourteen years together that have been better than that drive to New Jersey and the addition of Lucy to our lives.
Happy Gotcha Day my baby girl. I will love you eternally.
Xoxo, g
6jan22
Tomorrow is medicine day.
I have a raging headache today because I’ve pushed myself too hard too many days in a row without resting. And with no real rest in view. Plus we’re forecast to get a lot of snow right about when we’ll be driving to the hospital. So, yeah. Yay?
It’s one of my least favorite new MS things, these headaches. I’ve been tracking them for about a year and the only thing I can find in common with all of them (other than their 3 day life span) is that they come when I’m ‘getting into a groove’. Aka working out a lot and feeling like a normal human (running errands, cooking dinner ….pretty regular human stuff). Anyway. I’m a little frustrated. I’m obviously exhausted.
But I’m wearing my tie dyed PSU sweats and we’re gonna watch an oldie but a goodie tonight. So it’s not a total loss of a day. Plus, Lucy had a spa day (mani, pedi, bath, teeth cleaning…. Basically the works). We’re doing alright.
Xoxo, g
D5 Creation